Most Recent Posts
IRS Offers Estate Tax Relief To Widows And Widowers
This is a matter that moderate millionaires need to consider if they are surviving spouses of people who died after 2010, where no estate tax return was filed. You have to weigh the administrative hassle of accomplishing the filing against the chance that you might die with a net worth over the exclusion amount. Remember it is not your current net worth, but what your date of death net worth might be. Who knows maybe one of your ships might come in?
If you do think this is something you should do, jump on it now. There may well be a premium on estate tax preparation in December. If your spouse died in 2011, gathering the information to do the return might be a bit of a project.
Tax pros should think about their widow and widower clients particularly those who have substantially boosted their net worth since their spouse died.
There is more to the procedure than I have laid out here, but I think I have given you the primary action item.
How To Know Your Electronically Filed Income Tax Return Was Really Filed
Originally published on Forbes.com. I think it is a good thing that people tend to be loyal to their tax preparers. Reilly's Second Law Of Tax Practice, as modified...
Judge Cites Rapper In Wrap Ruling
I’m wondering whether that was the first time a state supreme court has cited a rap album as a source. It is worth noting that Justice Monica Marquez who wrote the opinion was, more or less, on her way to Yale Law School when Redman (Reginald Noble), who is about her age recorded his blunt rolling instructions in 1992.
Tax Woes Of The Marijuana Business Where Conservatives Lose Their Enthusiasm For States Rights
One way to mitigate the effect of 280E is to allocate expenses to a separate legal business. This technique was upheld by the Tax Court in Californians Helping to Alleviate Medical Problems in 2007. Free services such as yoga, instructions in use of vaporizers and on-site munchies do not help though.
Nick indicated that the IRS has been very aggressive in auditing cannabis establishments. Audit coverage is high and there is little give. They are looking deeply into payroll records for 280E disallowance and holding firm on not updating what goes into cost of goods sold. Based on the 471 interpretations, cannabis establishments are not being allowed to have the advantage of bonus depreciation.
Hole Opens In Tax Blogosphere – Say It Ain’t So Joe
There used to be three sources for an overview of the tax blogosphere. Joe’s daily summary, a weekly summary by Paul Caron and Bob Flach’s What’s the Buzz. The Tax Prof turned his weekly summary over to Joe making it a compilation of his daily summaries. What’s The Buzz is nice, but it never purported to be thorough and Bob Flach, who scorns the expensive software that the rest of the industry uses and hates the GD extensions almost as much as the mucking fess that the idiots in Congress make out of the tax law, restricts his blogging during tax season to instruction to his clients not to bother him. Joe referred to the Flach version of tax season as a two-month death march.
IRS Nixes Student Loan Payoff Charity
So here is the deal with NATFY. There is some beleaguered millennial feeling crushed by student debt. You want to help him out. But how do you know he really has student debt? And if you gave him some money to help pay down the student debt what is to prevent him from squandering the money on avocado toast and massaged kale? That where NATFY (No Avocado Toast For You) comes in. Here is the process they put into place.
Housing Industry Panicking About Tax Reform
We’ll start with the low-income housing tax credit which is the one I’m giving you. Protect the Lease connects the low-income housing credit to “ensuring housing affordability”. I wanted to do a little more than just looking at Forms 990 to assess how credible NAA and NMHC were. What I did was ask Mike Novogradac. Mike built a substantial national CPA firm (over twenty offices- ranked about 30 nationally) around the Low Income Housing Tax Credit. Mike assured me that the sponsors of Protect the Lease are substantial and credible.
And concern about the LIHTC is well grounded. Even the threat of tax reform has had an impact on the LIHTC. The credit is rationed by state population and assigned to developments by state housing agencies. Developers, in effect, sell the credit, which is spread over ten years, mostly to corporations. Concerns about tax reform, such as lower rates, have already affected the appetite of corporations for the credit pushing down the development dollars that credit allocations yield.
Motion To Stop IRS From Examining Marijuana Dispensary Up In Smoke
Last week I wrote about The Green Solution, at least by its own account Colorado’s #1 Marijuana dispensary. It was resisting an IRS summons based on the notion the Code Section 280E, which denies marijuana sellers ordinary and necessary business deductions, inappropriately puts the IRS in the drug busting business. Things did not go well for The Green Solution as the Tenth Circuit ruled that the anti-injunction act applied allowing the IRS to proceed. Now another shoe has dropped.
IRS Leans On LA Tax Assessors For Land Building Allocation
The practical problem that practitioners face when doing returns for people who own a couple of rental properties is that it is difficult to justify spending anything on an appraisal for rental properties in the sub million dollar category. Moving $100,000 from land to residential real estate will give you a bit over $3,600 in additional depreciation, which might save you a thousand bucks, unless, as often happens, your losses are suspended by the passive activity loss rules. Somebody selling cost segregation studies will make a presentation showing the future value of deprecation deductions, but it can be an uphill battle with skinflint real estate operators.
Mississippi Taxing – Nuclear Power And Accusations Of Racism
Claiborne County has significance in the history of the civil rights movement. In 1966, African American citizens of Port Gibson, the county seat, started a boycott of white merchants which was suspended after the City hired its first black police officer. Police shooting in the wake of the Martin Luther King assassination rebooted the boycott with leadership from the NAACP and Charles Evers, brother of Medgar Evers, who had been murdered in 1963. NAACP liability for collateral violence associated with the boycott ended up at the United States Supreme Court, which overturned a Mississippi judgment of $1.2 million against NAACP in 1982.
And property taxes were a big part of the racial struggle in Claiborne County. Evan Doss Jr. became the first black county tax assessor in 1972.
